One in 28 US kids has a parent in prison

The US’s exceptionally high rate of incarceration is causing economic damage not only to the people behind bars but to their children and taxpayers as a whole, a new study finds.

The study from the Pew Research Center’s Economic Mobility Project, released Tuesday, reports that the US prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980, from 500,000 to 2.3 million, making the US’s incarceration rate the highest in the world, beating former champions like Russia and South Africa.

This means more than one in 100 Americans is in prison, and the cost of prisons to states now exceeds $50 billion per year, or one in every 15 state dollars spent — a figure the study describes as “staggering.”

Robert Gates: ‘We’re Not Ever Leaving’ Afghanistan

In a shocking indication of a split between the White House and the Pentagon over the war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes that the U.S. military will never leave the war-torn country.

During a dinner hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Afghan President Hamid Karzai in May, Gates reminded the group that he still feels guilty for his role in the first President Bush’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, according to Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars.”

And to express his commitment to not letting down the country again, he emphasized:
“We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely,” Gates finally said. “In fact, we’re not ever leaving at all."

Either paid provocateurs, or some really lost, pathetically clueless people.